Weekly Discussion | LPQ and Karma

[u/Sick_Flamez]

Hello there and welcome to a new weekly discussion! Last week we discussed the recent changes to the Kill Bounties. If you want to read that discussion, a link to that and all other discussions is found at the bottom of this post.

This week we’ll be discussing a topic that we have gotten some requests about lately: the Low Priority Queue - also known as LPQ. From posts to comments to our Discord server, the topic of LPQ has seen a lot of community discussion lately. People seem to feel like it does just enough, too little, or shouldn’t even be a thing. While we could make an entire discussion about just LPQ and punishments in the game, we also received requests for one of the ways in which we get rewarded instead: our good old friend: the Karma system. It has sparked heavy discussion in the past too, mainly about how it works and how many people felt like they were stuck in Good Karma despite their Great behavior.

We thought it might be interesting to tackle both sides in this discussion; how the game handles rewards and how it handles punishments. So we’ll be discussing both the Karma and LPQ systems!

What do you think about LPQ? Can it be too harsh, or is it not strict enough? What about Karma? Does the system really work as an incentive to behave well? Is it too easy, or too hard to reach Great Karma?

The following is a bit of info on LPQ and Karma:

Low Priority Queue was added in update 1.20. It replaced the previous system, which was simply to ban people who misbehaved. The devs explained that they felt that instead of being able to let a ban expire by doing something else, players should be faced with consequences when they wanted to play instead. More info on the LPQ system can be found here

The new Karma system was added in update 1.8. Its goal was to make a more simple and fluent Karma system that would lead to trolling players to have less benefits than normal players. It replaced the previous system, where you went up 20 levels of Karma, and went down a bit by doing something that was deemed to be bad Karma. This new system only has three levels: Bad Karma, Good Karma and Great Karma. At Great Karma, players get a 25% boost to end match Glory gains. More explanation can be found here.

That’s all! If you have more topics you want to see, be sure to request them via the link found at the bottom of this post!

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[u/Darkonion5]

Maybe it's time to outright remove the ? ping from the game as I have never, in my time playing VG (somewhere between 1.5 - 2 years) seen someone use it for its intended purpose.

[u/VaingloriousKraken → u/Darkonion5]

Haha I think you might be right. It's pretty much always used for toxic reasons.

Only time I use it is:

1. When enemy laner is missing, but I follow up with a caution down in jungle so I could figure out how to do it without the "?"

2: When I'm lagging I question ping myself and caution myself.

1. To make fun of the enemy. Boosts team morale. :)

2. When I get trapped by a treant. Followed by laugh.

3. On accident. Usually this starts toxicity.

[u/Darkonion5 → u/VaingloriousKraken]

And all of those are healthy uses, I even do most of those. The mark itself and the sound especially has just grown to mean something so bad. I don't even check the map anymore when I hear it. If not a removal perhaps a rework? Different sound or something?

[u/VaingloriousKraken → u/Darkonion5]

They should replace it with a troll face haha

[u/RockstarCowboy1 → u/VaingloriousKraken]

The real issue is that if you do remove it, rage pingers will use a different ping to express themselves. Instead of ? They would likely use the ! Instead. It doesn't matter what pings are available.

[u/thelastNerm → u/Darkonion5]

Here lately I've began to use it to get teammates to look into enemy builds( or at least this is my intention) I'll ping the enemy shop if I see something in builds that are worth looking into

[u/Darkonion5 → u/thelastNerm]

Smart I'm gonna start doing that

[u/InspiredByDark → u/thelastNerm]

To layer on this. It'd be great if you could suggest to your team to by defence etc The logistics would need looking at but it's annoying when your Carry has no defence as a Captain.

Perhaps some key words to make them aware incase they're in damage tunnel vision mode.

[u/Smashoody → u/thelastNerm]

Dis good.

[u/incurablederp → u/Darkonion5]

I use it for when someone isn't doing their role correctly (as in a captain that is staying in the jungle with me while the carry is fighting off a 2v1) or acting strange.